Dee Dee's Wanderings

I often go to Adelaide (from my home in Brisbane). It's where I came from - my birth place. It's where my parents live, and my sister. From time to time my neice is there, and currently my nephew.

I miss Adelaide. In many ways I still wish I lived there - but then I don't miss the cold. But I manage to keep warm - sometimes!

My mother turns 91 this year (2006) and my father has just had his 87th birthday so I don't know how long I will have them. It is important to me to see them as often as I can, and I don't manage much sightseeing.

My father still drives but finds the Adelaide Airport challenging since the new terminal opened, so when I arrive I catch a taxi to the Buffalo - the replica, now restaurant at Glenelg. My mum and dad are waiting. Usually we just go to their home in Brighton, but on this occasion we went to Port Adelaide.

One of my mother's relatives helped set up the South Australian Maritime Museum, and it was there we went to see the exhibits there which included a special exhibit from Canberra - some reminders of World War II. My parents were both in the military - in fact my mother worked in the office on the corner of the street that the museum is housed.

The museum is an old wool store I suspect, and the huge timber beams were of interest to my father who was in the building trade after his Army days. The Museum houses a wonderful collection of material - especially about the ships that brought the new settlers to South Australia right up to the 1950's with cabins of the ships that travelled in those years there for all to see. How could people have travelled and slept in those old bunk beds so close to other travellers.

The exhibits from the War were most interesting - though being a nurse in my early days I found the story of the Centaur - the hospital ship that was torpedoed and sunk of North Stradbroke Island, Queensland, not far from where we now live, to be the most fascinating. Including the posters afterwards. "Revenge the Nurses."

Mum and Dad tire easily so we didn't spend as much time there as I would have liked. Next time. I know where to go now.